Money-spinners make TS lose `1,300cr
Test check of records of 320 units of commercial taxes, prohibition and excise, transport, land revenue, stamps and registration among others showed under collection of `1,289 cr in 1,553 cases
Revenue-earning departments of the state government have caused `1,289 crore loss to the state exchequer, observed the CAG report.
Test check of the records of 320 units of commercial taxes, prohibition and excise, transport, land revenue, stamps and registration and other departmental offices conducted in 201617 showed under assessment/short levy/ loss of revenue aggregating to `1,289 crore in 1,553 cases.
Test check of 10 offices of the transport department revealed that 20,163 vehicles were plying without fitness certificates due to lack of alerts in the system and failure of the department to ensure renewal of fitness certificates. This posed risk to public safety besides non-realisation of `51.54 lakh.
The state government had not notified the enhanced fee for second and subsequent offences in the schedule of compounding fee. Low compounding fee for repeated offences allow erring drivers to violate traffic rules, posing risk to life and property. Besides, this lead to non-realisation of compounding fee of `6.05 crores.
The owners of the vehicles were not booked in 15,159 offences for allowing unauthorised persons to drive their vehicles. The loss of revenue towards compounding fee worked out to `1.52 crore. According to the CAG report, bilateral tax and penalty of `2.76 crore was not collected from the owners of 1,330 vehicles registered in Maharashtra and Karnataka. High Security Registration Plates (HSRP) in respect of 2,92,843 new vehicles (42 per cent) were not affixed. The HSRP project had not commenced in respect of 18.41 lakh ‘in-use’ vehicles. Regarding VAT and Central Sales tax, in 24 offices, 28 dealers claimed excess input tax credit (ITC) of `2.72 crore due to adoption of incorrect method of restriction of ITC. In 14 offices, 23 dealers were allowed ITC of `1.55 crore incorrectly on ineligible items. In nine offices, the assessing officials incorrectly allowed ITC of `1.63 crore on work contracts of 11 dealers. Application of incorrect rates of tax resulted in short levy of `35.61 crore. Registration officials collected `10,000 on each document instead of charging 0.5 per cent on the amount secured.